SINGAPORE — A 25-year-old man was sentenced to seven weeks in jail on Monday (Feb 11) for defaulting on his National Service (NS) obligations for more than three years.

Zaley Cheng Xi Xiong left Singapore on May 19, 2014 — a month after he received his enlistment notice by post — and did not return until he called the NS call centre from Australia on Aug 22, 2017 to inform the authorities that he would be returning home and serving NS.

He had decided to return because he had learnt that his father, who lives here, was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Aside from failing to report for enlistment into full-time NS at the Basic Military Training Centre on June 10, 2014, it was also an offence for him to have remained outside Singapore for more than three months without a valid exit permit.

Upon the advice of the Ministry of Defence’s Central Manpower Base, Cheng returned to Singapore on Aug 30, 2017 and reported to its Depot Road base the next day.

That was when Cheng admitted that he was aware of the enlistment notice, but had chosen to evade NS as he had medical issues, heard stories about NS and was afraid of sustaining injuries during training.

He was subsequently enlisted into the Singapore Armed Forces on Jan 26 last year.

DODGING ENLISTMENT

Court documents stated that he lied to his parents in 2014, telling them that he was going to Brunei for a holiday.

It was only after he reached Brunei that he confessed to his parents that he wanted to remain in Australia for good. His mother tried to persuade him to return to Singapore but he refused.

Cheng then moved to Australia, where he obtained his bachelor’s degree.

An enlistment inspector went to his parents’ house on June 12, 2014, two days after Cheng was supposed to enlist, but no one was home.

A police gazette was then raised against Cheng four days after that, on June 16, 2014.

A day after he was blacklisted, an enlistment inspector managed to contact his mother by telephone.

She informed the authorities that Cheng had last contacted the family sometime in late May, telling them that he would be back in Singapore for enlistment.

With that in mind, she left for a short trip overseas, but upon her return, she could no longer contact her son, noted Deputy Public Prosecutor Kwang Jia Min.

PENALTIES FOR NS DEFAULTERS

Cheng could have been jailed for up to three years and/or fined S$10,000 for failing to report for enlistment. The same punishment applies to staying outside the country without a valid exit permit when one is required to enlist.

Statistics shared by Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen last September showed that there had been an average of 350 NS defaulters yearly across the past 10 years.

They either failed to register or enlist for NS, or did not return to Singapore when their exit permits had expired.